Howard Kurtz Archive: Internet

When it comes to high tech, the media have something of a split personality.
The biggest single topic is an upbeat, hey-this-is-making-our-lives-better message, accounting for 23 percent of the coverage in a one-year period from 2009 to 2010.
But close behind, says a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, was a darker aspect: concerns about risks to our privacy and particularly the dangers for children. That amounted to 18 percent of the coverage.
There you have the twin poles of American attitudes toward all the devices that keep us wired. They are vital, exciting, way cool; but they are also stalking us, our shopping habits and our kids.